NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The Yale women's cross country team heads to Hopkinton State Fairgrounds in Contoocook, N.H., for the NCAA Cross Country Northeast Regional Championships on Friday. The Bulldogs will face 40 regional schools in a 6K race starting at 11:00 a.m.
The Bulldogs are coming off a second-place finish at the Ivy League Heptagonal Cross Country Championships on Oct. 31. That marked Yale's best finish at Heps since finishing second in 2016.
The Bulldogs finished 11th at Regionals last year. Providence is the defending regional champion.
USTFCCCA Regional Rankings
The Bulldogs enter the race ranked fourth in the Northeast Region in the latest USTFCCCA poll. Here is the top 10:
- Boston College
- Syracuse
- Providence
- Yale
- UConn
- Army West Point
- Columbia
- Harvard
- Quinnipiac
- Cornell
USTFCCCA XCRI
New for 2025, the USTFCCCA has developed the
Cross Country Ratings Index (XCRI) – a comprehensive ranking system that evaluates athletes based on head-to-head race results and strength of schedule. Rankings are based solely on current season performances and are objective and deterministic (no simulations used). In those rankings, the Bulldogs are seventh in the Northeast Region in the "Team Knockout" rankings.
The Bulldogs
- Senior Claire Archer has been the team's top finisher in eight straight races dating back to the start of last season. She is coming off her second straight fourth-place finish at Heps, which earned her first team All-Ivy League recognition. She also was an Academic All-Ivy selection. Last year at Regionals she was Yale's top finisher, 12th overall.
- Senior Charlotte Whitehurst has been Yale's No. 2 finisher in three races and No. 1 in one race. She placed 10th at Heps, earning second team All-Ivy recognition. Last year at Regionals she was Yale's sixth finisher, 104th overall.
- Junior Hebe Chadwick has been Yale's No. 3 finisher in two races, No. 2 in one race and No. 5 in one race.
- Senior Linde Fonville, Yale's captain, has been Yale's No. 4 finisher in three races and No. 6 in one race. She was Yale's No. 3 finisher at Regionals last year, 63rd overall.
- First-year Phoebe Benun has been Yale's No. 5 finisher in two races, No. 3 in one race and No. 4 in one race. She was second among all first-years at Heps, finishing 16th overall and third on the team.
- Junior Daniella Henderson has been Yale's No. 6 finisher in three races and No. 3 in one race. Last year at Regionals she was No. 4 on the team and No. 78 overall.
- Sophomore Sylvie Sanok Dufallo has cracked Yale's top seven in two of the last three races.
History
Yale's best finish in the last six editions of NCAA Regionals was third in 2018, which earned the Bulldogs a spot in the NCAA Championships as a team.
The last Yale individual to advance to the NCAA Championships was
Kayley DeLay '21 MPH '23 in 2021. She placed second at Regionals to earn her place in the championship race. She went on to place 10th at the NCAA Championships and earn All-America honors.
NCAA Regionals and NCAA Championships
- NCAA Championships selections will be announced by 5:00 p.m. ET Saturday on ncaa.com.
- The NCAA Men's and Women's Cross Country Championships provide for a maximum of 32 (five-to-seven-person) teams and 38 individuals per gender.
- Eighteen teams automatically qualify for the championships races by finishing as one of the top two teams at any of the nine regional races.
- The remaining 14 at-large teams are selected by the NCAA Division I Cross Country Subcommittee.
- Thirty-six individuals automatically qualify for the championships races by being one of the top four regional finishers not on an advancing team.
- Two additional individuals are selected at-large by the committee.
